Friday, August 26, 2016

Well, we are off on a long trip again. After two years of being around home and somewhat limited travel, we are headed back to Australia. We are leaving on Monday, August 29 and expect to be back home on Tuesday, September 27. The next couple of days will be the typical rush to get packed, and make last minute arrangements.

I’m not sure we are looking forward to being away from a bed for over 35 1/2 hours, but that is what it takes to travel 10,857 miles. Of course that includes plane changes along the way. We fly from Omaha to Los Angeles, to Auckland, New Zealand and then into Brisbane, Australia. The long flight (12 hours) is at night so I expect we will be napping in our seats.

I tried to show our route on a single map, using Google Earth. However It isn’t to see it in a single map, so I have included three screen grabs.

First map shows the flight across the country to Los Angeles and the start of the flight over water.

This is the bulk of the trip from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand. We get a three hour layover there to change planes and stretch our legs.

And the final leg from Auckland into Brisbane, Australia.

The plan for this trip is to spend most of our time in the Brisbane area, visiting Sylvia and Roy (Monty’s sister). We don’t have any definite plans at this point but may take a few days and visit Darwin in the Northern Territory. There is still a lot of places to explore around Brisbane so doubt that we will get bored. If we do get to Darwin, then we will have been able to travel to points along all four coasts. We have been able to see much of Australia on our previous three trips, including parts of the East Coast (Brisbane, Sydney, Gold Coast, Fraser Island, Blue Mountains), We have been to Melbourne (south coast), Canberra, Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kings Canyon, Perth (west coast) and some of the Southwest coast.

I probably will only add to this blog as we visit interesting places and see unusual sites. So come back once in a while and see what we have been up to. As always, we like to hear your comments. My next entry will be after we arrive.